Do not become so familiar with good people that you stop treating them as good fortune.

Familiarity flattens people the same way it flattens objects. Someone kind, reliable, and present becomes the background of your life, and the background is rarely thanked. Good people are unusual, and the fact that you see them daily does not make them common.

Pick someone whose steadiness you rely on and treat them this week as if they were newly arrived in your life. Ask a real question. Say something specific about what they do. Reliability is not the same as inevitability.